Secretary of Transportation repeatedly postponed making a decision on this legislation

Lawmakers in Washington have been considering a mandate that would force automakers to install rear view cameras in most all-new vehicles. Two members of Congress and parents of children injured (or killed) by inattentive drivers backing over them are now calling on regulators to finalize the regulations.

The advocates are urging the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to finalize regulations that have been delayed four times since 2011. Congress approved legislation in 2007 that was signed into law by President George W Bush requiring the government to set regulations for rear visibility by February 28, 2011.

However, that date has come and gone many times with Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood repeatedly choosing to delay making a decision on the rule.

The NHTSA has proposed standards that would have required automakers to install backup cameras on all new vehicles by the year 2014. The regulation was expected to be in effect by September of 2014 and was estimated to cost the auto industry in the area of $1.9 billion to $2.7 billion annually. The regulation would also likely increase the purchase price of new vehicles.

NHTSA administrator David Strickland recently said that the ruling would happen "at some point in the near future." He did point out that the rule is still under review, commenting, "We are still working through a number of issues. It's a very important rule for the department… We want to make sure we get it right."

The backup camera regulations are intended to help eliminate the blind spots on vehicles that could obscure pedestrians, particularly the elderly and children, from the driver's view. The NHTSA says that about 100 children age 5 or under die each year in backup accidents and more than half of those are one year old or younger.

Hey I hate driving in reverse and a the camera in my car is so fantastic at helping me out (not view wise but the turn guide). I think a lot of people would enjoy the device in their car. That said I think this is a horrible idea.

I hate to be the evil guy in the room just number crunching instead of "thinking about the children". But 500 kids a year isn't that much. I mean we have population of 313 million. Crap happens. We can't regulate out stupid. We can't count for every accident. We certainly can't make the public spend ~1.5-3 Billion dollars more a year (14.5 million cars at $200 a pop, with unknown amount with the feature already). That is spending 4 million a year per child and it would be 5 years before you see any measurable decrease in incidents and 10 years before enough cars will have been circulated before you could come close to that 4 million per child. For the first 15-20 years the numbers will be closer to 6.5 million dollars per child lost.

That assumes that having a rear view camera would actually eliminate these types of accidents. It's a dumb tax, everyone else paying to help the stupid out just that much more. So yeah lets put that much more of a financial burden on everyone as a whole to help 500 people a year (the drivers) continue to be idiots but have yet another enabler.

Not 500. 100. 1.5 billion dollars per year for 100 kids running around without adult supervision.

A better law would require all kids under the age of 5 to be attached to their parents by a leash. Costs $1 and only affects those who have kids that run around outside and might force the parents to actually spend time with them.

Parents forgot they need to be a parent. When I was teaching, I can't even count how many times I see parents come into school complaining about their kids behaviors at home even though they behave just fine in school.

They blame the school for their failures and then spends thousands on a psychologists. Then they send them to other therapists because they didn't like the answer of "your child is lonely, misguided, insecure, and needs your attention". After spending $20k or so they realize maybe the last 8 therapists are right. Then they buy all these stupid books and videos as a quick fix. Lol, it's funny how people try to solve family/relationship problems with money.

Please keep blaming the car's blind spot when you run your kid over because you can't properly operate a vehicle.

Yeah sorry thought I read 500 in the beginning. That's now 15 million dollars per casualty with the public eating up 7.5 billion dollars before any measurable return on implementation. A 20 year outlook being something like 24 million of tax payers money per child saved. Out of that 30 billion dollars spent in 20 years at 24 million spent per life saved you only managed to save 1250 Children or basically about half the children with most of that being well after the public has spent well over half the 30 billion dollars.

All that assuming that no kid is ever hit by a car with rear-view camera. Not that it wasn't people not paying attention for whatever reason or under the influence of something. But honestly the sad part is it would probably be worse if a large amount of people didn't care for their car more then the people around them. I imagine most of these accidents are by unobservant people driving beaters. So really it's probably going to take even longer to completely eradicate the cars that they are using without a camera and they will find another excuse to why they murdered someone once they have a car with one (which will be so old it probably won't work or they let it get covered by so much dirt they can't see anything).

"So, I think the same thing of the music industry. They can't say that they're losing money, you know what I'm saying. They just probably don't have the same surplus that they had." -- Wu-Tang Clan founder RZA